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Thanks a lot for this update. Good to know that AMD doesn't intend to unveil a major change in strategic direction, at least not on a public basis until next year as you have noted. Looking forward to your 28nm HD7000 series GPU review. Can we possibly expect an update to the game test bench suite, perhaps SKYRIM, BF3?Reply

Try to pick out games that scale well with CPU AND GPU's. Civ V's lategameview benchmark is one example. Far Cry 2 also scaled well, but it's pretty old now so probably not worth having in a current benchmark suite. Since Metro2033 is the current most demanding game out there, it's probably good to keep it in the mix.Reply

Here's the thing about SCFA (and I love the game BTW). The default AI caused major slowdown and only used a single core for those tasks whiched caused the slow down. So until we have 10X single core performance default AI won't run smooth on SCFA.

I was running a Core I7 860 and I can tell you that with the modified AI (which is much better anyways) there is not very much slowdown.

When I played Multiplayer with huge units on the lan I never had slowdown problems with 4 civs 2000 units a piece.

Now I run a 2600k at 4.4ghz but have not tried SCFA yet ( lost my disc trying to obtain another one)

Try these mods, FA Patch 3603 beta, Sorian mod, and DuncanE's FA AI Patch. Makes the game much much better.Reply

Little off-topic since it's the CPU, but I've always wanted a CIV V end-of-turn benchmark: How long do you have to wait after clicking the "end-turn" button until the enemy AIs have finished their turn and it's your turn again? It's one of very few instances in gaming where you are actually just staring at your monitor waiting for the CPU to finish.

I recall Ryan making a comment once upon a time that he really lamented just how lousy some of the games used in his benchmarks were.

I agree, and many users come here looking not for a large selection of benchmarks in games they will never play (F1, Dirt, Crysis) but ones they plan to spend hundreds of hours in like Skyrim, BF3, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.

Metro is a must since its still the most demanding game out there, but please, more focus on the best PC games rather than the ones that are the prettiest.Reply

Layoffs are of course not a good sign for the.company but the marketing department indeed failed with the launch of Bulldozer. How they ever gave it the FX designation is beyond me, all they accomplished is ruin whatever good name the FX brand had. The engineering layoffs are more worry some but we really don't know the reasons behind them. Hopefully it results in better products and more timely execution and not the end of completion for Intel on the high-end.

I also like Reads comments. Faster moving R&D, and timely product execution is exactly what AMD needs. whether he's the right man for the job or not remains to be seen but something has to be done to get things turned around.Reply

Yea, but I can't help but to think how much more streamlined can you get on the engineering side? The GPU side's doing very well so I don't know if you want to mess with that, and I thought layoffs were one of the main reasons Bulldozer disappointed.

This is especially scary with many upper management engineers having left. I've got to think that this is going to affect AMD's long term vision, which is probably bad for the industry. Reply

Hi, it's 2011. If you can't download Catalyst packages in the blink of an eye, you need to get a friend to do it for you. Or else go leech wifi from a restaurant or coffee shop. Something. Don't cut out features for everyone else.Reply

What features, silly ? Catalyst drivers are a huge blob of crap that should really be 10% times the size it is now, especially considering the fact that it requires yet another large blob (.Net) to even run.

There is absolutely no reason why the driver and the tweaker application that consists of nothing more than few sliders and checkboxes should be larger combined than the minimum size for a GUI application, which on Windows I estimate to be well under 10 MB (driver taking the smaller portion of this).

Anybody who has done low-level programming on things such as drivers knows that there is no way in heel to get them bloated up to 100+ MB without doing dumb things on purpose.Reply

The .NET requirement especially is plain idiotic. They sure don't need it on the Linux side and CCC looks about the same. Many of us like to truly minimize the OS footprint on a gaming machine Windows install.Reply

I'm concerned about the direction of AMD these days.I read Rory Read's comments to the troops and it really sounded like a lot of corporate-speak.However, on reflection I believe that this is what he was really trying to say:

"Last quarter, or was it fifty cents, I described a set of initiatives to streamline business and decision-making processes across our operations, (in order to speed them up to a higher speed), R&D (so that we can discover new ways to make the things we manufacture), and go-to-market functions (so that our inventories of processor component fruits and vegetables remain at competitive levels). We are in full executional deployment across each of the key work streams, getting things done at the time that they are completed, efficiently and finally. These efforts are aimed at accelerating our transformation to a world-class design company that efficiently designs World Classes better than any competitor...growing revenue to a point where it is much greater than now, lowering costs to a point far less expensive than at the present time, and reducing time-to-market (driving faster than in the past when going to shop). We expect to see material benefits from this project that will greatly benefit us in 2012, or sooner if our future projections are accurate and we are able to arrive at that year before that time."Reply

BS, if you want to improve a business you will rarely remove your engineering capacity. Your engineers are trained and have learned key knowledge specific to AMD in the industry; with such specialization you don't remove ANY of this capacity.

It is also important that one does not reduce engineering capacity but also not to reduce engineering support capacity.

I agree with frozentundra, Anand should run AMD. None of this political/PR crap. No wonder our old friend left AMD a couple of months ago.Reply